Oldham Athletic vs Newport County
This afternoon, at a chilly Boundary Park in Oldham, unless the weather dictates otherwise, Oldham Athletic will host Newport County. The second match between the two teams in just over a month. The third in under a year despite the intervention of Covid-19 since the two teams last met at Boundary Park in February 2020.
Back then, it was a meeting between a limply out of form Newport, and an Oldham team that was able to swat aside every team that arrived at Boundary Park, it seemed. This season, the opposite is true for Oldham, and while Newport haven’t won since before the reverse fixture in December, it would be hard to describe them as being as forlorn as on their last visit. By the time Newport visited in February 2020, they had sunk to 16th in the table (from 7th when the teams met at Rodney Parade in late November 2019). They’re 2nd today, with games in hand to go back to the top.
Elo ratings for the two teams show that descent in 2019/20 on the yellow line on left hand side below (right hand side is back to 1960). Relatively speaking they are much better this season, and their recent dip is tiny in comparison to that in late 2019. Latics, in blue, have also slipped back in recent weeks since that win at Rodney Parade.
In many respects, Elo ratings as better versions of the league table, since they reward teams more for better wins. Hence had Newport beaten Oldham in December, the amount their rating would have increased by was less than the amount Oldham’s increased by, since Newport were top of the table, and Oldham were in 16th at the time.
So, what about today’s game, assuming it goes ahead? Well, bookmakers rightly have Newport as favourites — see the table below, where the average bookmaker price for Newport to win implies a probability of their winning at 40%. Oldham are priced at 30%, or about two to one against.
Oldham are back in 16th again today, with 8 wins to Newport’s 11, and 28 points to Newport’s 40. The Poisson regressions that I use to generate much of the probabilities in this table suggest that Oldham have an expected goals total of 1.32 to Newport’s 1.3. It suggests, as almost always, that both teams will likely score in this match. My model, with no prompting from my whatsoever, thinks it’ll be closer than the bookmakers — I have Oldham 37% to win, Newport 36%.
Which perhaps is bonkers given Oldham’s abject home record: the worst in League Two, 7 points and 2 wins from 12 games. It’s also the joint worst in Oldham’s history, equalling their abject home start in 2015/16.
But records are a function of games that have happened in the past, and may or may not be an indicator of what is to come. This is a team that has the best away record in League Two whilst at the same time having the worst home record. In a time when there aren’t fans in stadiums, it’s rather hard to fathom why the significant difference between home and away outcomes.
One pattern was that a number of those great away performances came at strong teams (Cambridge, Newport and Exeter), and the more disappointing performances at weaker teams (Stevenage, in particular). That’s actually been mirrored at home, with a draw against Carlisle and a win against Cheltenham, and defeats against Scunthorpe, Crawley, Morecambe and Mansfield.
As a statistician, these are also very small samples — 11 and 12 games respectively.
The tougher matches in the second half of the season come at home, and so it’s possible that home form will pick up. When Latics got to this point in 2015/16 on just 7 points, they eventually picked up to win another six home games before the season ended. Will that happen this season too?
